It's Been Years

Or maybe it's been more like a week. None the less, here I am creating a post with a week's worth of nothing to say.

First off I'd like to point out that I really truly don't have anything to do with Norbert's blog. This is not to say that I haven't enjoyed the three posts which have graced its page, but it was pointed out to me today that it would be really weird if I was the one writing it. But I'm not, so it isn't.

Last week I delivered some things to what, from the outside, looked like a normal 2 or 3 bedroom house. Not so.

Making a single, unbroken line across the walls of the house was what must be some muscular crown molding. Every 2 feet there was a 3'x4' painting of a King, Queen, Knight, Prince, or some other royal looking torso. And each painting was framed in a good 4 inches of ornate gold painted wood frame. The hallways were lines with little antique tables and there was a grand piano taking up most of the living room.

The entire house looked like it belonged inside an old English manor house - one which all the other manor houses agree is trying too hard to fit in.

And then I saw the kitchen. Yellow and brown and linoleum, straight out of 1978. I guess it's hard to be 100% consistent.

They guy's wife was interesting too. She kept flitting between surprise and indignation, separated by only fleeting moments of calm. Her eyes opened wide and she put her hands to her cheeks Macaulay Culkin style when she I showed her how the pump hooks to the bed. (You hang it on the foot of the bed. Really, it's that simple.) She threw her hands up in outrage when relating the story of how the woman who delivered the medication box left it near the front door. Why, she could never lift such a heavy box! I offered to move it to the kitchen. It weighed roughly the same as a gallon of milk.

But she was very nice. As I was leaving she told me I was both very nice and very handsome, and that she hoped I had a nice girlfriend. When I said that I didn't just at the moment she told me that when her husband saw her that was it - He was done with dating. I assume that she meant that it was love at first sight, not that he chose that moment to give up. The second reading makes for a terribly depressing anecdote.

Yuck

They've done it to me again, those rotten vegans. First they pretend to serve pizza, and now this.

I hadn't had lunch yet, I was starving, I was late for a delivery, and I needed to get gas. While the van was filling up I ran into the station to get some sort of gas station snack. And there, on a shelf next to the moon-pies, was a great big espresso chip cookie calling out to me.

Perfect, I thought. What could be better than an espresso chip cookie? I tell you what: A cookie containing butter, eggs, and real chocolate. After I took my first bite of the cookie (and nearly blew it onto my windshield) I peered closely at the label. To my great dismay I discovered that I had purchased a vegan cookie.

Who sells vegan food at a gas station? If they sold bio diesel I might look more closely at the snacks, but there was just no indication that there might be stealth vegan cookies running around. I'm writing to the FDA. There needs to be some gargantuan mandated labels on the front of vegan food that says, "Warning, this food contains substitutes for all the ingredients that make it taste good. Eat with caution, as it may taste like ass."

Now You See Her

And now I don't.

My friend just came by to pick up Norbert, and Norbert was none too pleased. I figured I could hold her when I answered the door and introduce everybody, but 12 scratches on my arms go a long was in explaining how that went.

But after 3 minutes of explaining her eccentricities, 7 minutes of packing up her stuff, 15 minutes of trying to get her out from under the bed, and 5 minutes trying to get her into the cat carrier, she's finally gone.

I miss her already, but not in the way I might if we'd gotten along 100% of the time. I was trying to get in some last minute quality time with her and she attached her claws to my scalp and bit me on the head. Maybe that was just her way of saying goodbye.

Flea Market

I've found that I really enjoy flea markets. For whatever reason I like to look through everybody else's weird crap. And it turns out that every Sunday there's a flea market not too far from my house which has all the weird crap you could ever want, and some you would never want.

Among the things that I did want where a number of interesting and ornate lighters, a gold encrusted rotary dial phone a 3 foot tall golden pedestal ($50), a grinder, a little tiny cordless skill-saw, and any number of weird old electronics of questionable functionality. My favorite of those was a vacuum tube tester. If I lived in a bigger place and had lots of money my house would be covered floor to ceiling in that stuff.

I did purchase two lighters, one of which is the tiniest lighter I've ever seen.



After I clipped off a piece of flint from one of my Zippos, fiddled with the wick, and refilled the reservoir it lit right up. It's so cute.



The weirdest thing I saw for sale was a Nazi arm band. I have to wonder about that. Who would sell Nazi things at a flea market? I mean, I think it's kind of weird to sell Nazi things at all, but at a flea market? I picture flea market Nazi arm bands being made out of felt on somebody's RV kitchen table the night before. Disturbing.

I feel like it's weird that I check my own cat's blog to see if she's posted anything. Especially because mostly she hasn't

Friendsteram

I've noticed that websites like MySpace and Friendster have started getting spam profiles. A website will set up there and then ask you to be its friend. But the most evil of these spam things is the mail order bride profiles.

Here I am checking my email when I see a girl named Merry has sent me a wink on Friendster. I wasn't sure what a wink was, but it sounded good so I checked her out. Turns out she's from Indonesia which is terribly inconvenient. I did, however, enjoy her About Me statement: "My friends said that I'm energic and friendly...I like gathering with friends. I don't like to give up. God is nice*."

It sounds like she’s little overly religious for me, but she’s got moxie and I like that.



*I believe "God is nice" is from Isaac 3:35

And Isaac bespoke to Jesus, "So what's God like?"

And Jesus replied, "God, well, God is nice."

Befuddled by what Jesus speaketh, Isaac asked, "Really? Just nice? Not luminescent or magnanimous or, I don't know, great? I was expecting some more sparkling adjectives."

Jesus sighed and explained, "Yeah, no, he is. He's pretty great. I've just been feeling down lately because I feel like I don't get any credit for things. I make wine from water, I heal people, I come back from the dead, although that's later, and still all anyone can talk about is how God created everything, and thank you lord for this food. And have you seen the food? Most of it really nothing to be thankful for."

Right then Isaac decided he should cheer Jesus up with a big dinner party with all of his friend. He'd serve some fishes and maybe those loafs Jesus likes to much.

Holy Crap

My cat has started a blog. I wonder if she'll write about what the hell happened in my bathroom today.

(For those of you who haven't been paying close attention to the comments, I swear up and down that I have zero to do with Norbert's blog.)

Thursday's Reign of Destruction

Today started out ok. It was 75 and sunny again and the various talk shows on my local NPR affiliate were interesting enough. And then came lunch.

I was in kind of a rush to find some lunch as I hadn't scheduled my deliveries very well and it was 2:30pm by the time I was free. I ended up in Sebastopol which isn't my normal stomping ground, so the restaurants there are foreign to me.

As I drove by a strip mall I noticed a little place that said "Restaurant" above the door. I was indeed searching for a restaurant, and the little window decal declaring that they sell pizza by the slice sealed the deal. I went in and ordered a slice of "Italian Cheese Pizza" and a pink grapefruit juice squeeze, then sat down at a table.

They guy who had taken my order brought over my juice squeeze and a warm iceless glass of water with some stuff floating in it. The couple at the table next to me got the same glass of floaters and they inquired as to what it was. They guy said it was lemon, but upon taking a sip of my water, I detected not a hint of lemon. I concentrated on my juice squeeze.

When my pizza arrived I was thoroughly unimpressed. It looked like a Safeway select frozen pizza, and it tasted like the chef had undercooked the box. The dough was oddly hard, and yet felt undercooked at the edges. The cheese wasn't really melty or stringy as cheese should be. It was the taste and consistency of pizza-temperature wax. (Although I'm sure many a scented candle has more taste than this cheese did.)

When I went to pay, the guy asked how the slice was, and just as I was answering I read his shirt: "Slice of Life, Vegan Cuisine." "Um, good," I responded. On the way back to the depot I stopped to buy a Häagen Dazs bar.

When I got home I checked my email, played with Norbert for a while, and then ventured into the bathroom to contemplate life for a while. My contemplation was put on hold as I rounded the corner and discovered glass covering the floor and filling the tub. Apparently while I was at work my right shower door exploded. My first thought was that Norbert was somehow involved, but I was assured that shower doors are made of tempered glass and I would be hard pressed to break it even if I fired Norbert out of a cannon right into the door. (Which I was tempted to do when I first saw the destruction.)

So my shower is out of commission for a day or two. (I really hope it's not more.) And I'm pretty sure my landlord thinks I did it. I'm hoping her parents were home and heard it break sometime between the hours of 8am and 5pm when I was safely North of the Golden Gate Bridge. I want them to know that it wasn't my fault so they can feel bad about me having to scrounge around borrowing people's showers.

High Fiber Shower

This morning I fixed my self a bowl of grape-nuts (with Splenda, I don't own sugar) and sat down on the couch to eat it and to watch some TV. Norbert, feeling sociable, hopped up on my lap to try to stick her nose in my cereal. I shooed her away and she settled back down on my lap. When I reached down to pick up the remote, Norbert perked up seeing an opportunity to strike. She reared back, and with all her might, took a downward swipe at the unattended spoon handle thereby flinging soggy grape-nuts everywhere. And I do mean everywhere. They got on the remote, the floor, my bathrobe, my couch, my face, and the coffee table. In fact they got on everything but Norbert.

I think it was premeditated.

Quite the Tuesday

Thank the heavens; Norbert may have a new mom. A friend in Oakland says she may want her, and that's fine by me. Plus she has a really nice place full of natural light and views of the outside.

I'm going to drop her off about a week from tonight for a 5 day trail run. Best case scenario is that Norbert will have a new home with more company and lots of extra space in which to frolic. Worst case scenario is that I've found somebody to cat sit while I go to Portland for Thanksgiving. (In the worst case scenario it will be hard to pry Norbert away from her fancy new digs.)

In other good news, it's November 15th. NOVEMBER. And at 7:30pm tonight it was 67 degrees and 50% humidity. Earlier it was in the mid 70s and I rode my scooter around for about an hour. According to W the jury is still out on the whole global warming issue. But I think somebody should take a serious look at how we managed to get our seasons backwards here.

What Now?

I'm still encumbered by my Norbert problem. (Problemo de Norbert) The advice I've received has ranged from, "yeah, it's probably best to give her away" to "you need two cats." Either one might fix my situation, both could make it worse.

I took Friday off, and all weekend Norbert and I had a good time. She slept on my chest on no less than 4 occasions, and flopped on my nose a time or too as well. She even started responding to "no!" Could it be that she had been taking English classes? Could she have finally grown out of being a turd?

No. As I type this I have 3 fresh scratches on my right shoulder, 2 fairly deep scratches between my shoulder blades, and kind of a welt thing on my wrist. Norbert has made zero progress. I think she was just happy to have somebody around all day.

This theory lends credence to the 2 cat theory of apartment wellbeing. Unfortunately my apartment is very small. Also, the SFSPCA requires proof that I can have a pet which would require me to ask my landlady to write me a letter saying that pets are ok. She's not big on putting things in writing, so adoption is out. And regardless of how I obtained a second cat, I need some sort or return policy so I have an out if it turns out that I just doubled my problem.

To top it all off, I haven't heard from the friend that gave Norbert to me in the first place. And I think it would be difficult to give her to somebody outside Northern California. So I think my best bet at this point would be to try out the re-homing program at the SFSPCA, assuming Norbert passes the behavior test which is a great big if.

Does your cat have any behavioral quarks?
Aside from:
-splashing water everywhere
-scratching
-biting
-shooting kitty litter outside the confines of a fully enclosed litter box
-trying to claw me under the covers while I sleep

No. She's a dream cat.

I will give her this - she has truly changed my life. Here is one telling example:

I used to wash my sheets once every, oh, say, 2-6 months. I know, gross. But since I was the only one sleeping in them it didn't matter that much. Now I wash my sheets once a week. Why have I so drastically upped the frequency? It takes 5 or 6 days for the combination of bloodspots and kitty litter to get really annoying, and I do my laundry on Sundays.

Master of Love

Having trouble with your relationship? You should hire me to come fix it, at least in the short term. I seem to have the ability to make girls cling to their boyfriends with a mere glance.

I went to see My Morning Jacket at the Fillmore last night. To summarize the parts of evening which are not related to the subject at hand real quick: The show was okay, the Fillmore gives away free apples and I ate two, and on the way back to my car I found a orange mesh-back hat which says "Jägermeister Musicians Tour" on the front, and I had a shepherd's pie for dinner. All and all a relatively good night.

Anyhow, back to my special powers. In the midst of getting a little bored with the show I started to look around at my fellow concert goers and rediscovered the fact that hot girls go to concerts. I feel like any 10 girls from regular life would lose out to any group of 10 from a concert in a beauty contest. I don't know why this is, but I always find it to be so when I go to a show. You know? Whoa. Go with the flow, Joe. Yo!

As I was looking around at all concert ladies, I noticed that every time I looked at one she would immediately clamp on to her boyfriend. Sometimes a girl who had seemingly come alone would create a boyfriend from thin air and clamp on to him. I believe that it was Einstein who postulated that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, i.e. you can't make something from nothing. But apparently with one look from me the laws are physics are no match for love.

I'm not sure what all this means, but I've narrowed it down to 2 conclusions. 1) I have magical powers ala Aphrodite. 2) I'm even creepier than I previously assumed. So creepy I can call boyfriends into existence with a simple glance.

Decisions, Decisions

As I mentioned in verse, Norbert is driving me nuts. It's not like this is news to anyone. I've often complained that she bites me a lot, and that she scratches me to a lesser extent. But I think I'm getting to the point where I'm weighing the costs and benefits, and the benefits are nearly microscopic.

1.38% of my time is spent in quality cat snuggle time on a good day. 45 seconds or so is right when I get home from work, and the other 15 minutes is at about 10:30 (a half hour after I would rather be asleep) when she flops down on my face and likes to be scratched.

She spends 10 hours alone on the best of days. And that's 10 when I'm physically not there. She spends another 7ish with me there but asleep. (Minus a minute here and there where I wake up suddenly and pry her claws off my leg.) All that alone time can't be fun for her and it probably leads to her being a pain in the ass when I am actually home.

During those 17 hours where she can set her own priorities she likes to do a number of things: Throw things on the floor, shred paper products, spread kitty litter everywhere (on the couch, on my bed, under my bed, under my covers), splash around in her water dish and get cat prints everywhere.

So I feel bad for her and I feel bad for me. It was really nice of my friend to bring me a kitten, but I'm thinking that I'm just not ready to be a dad. I need to ask my friend in LA if I can give her back.

Failing that, does anyone want an indoor cat? I'm sure she'd be happier with other cat friends, or with somebody who was home more often. Or somebody who lived in a wading pool. Seriously, I've never met a cat that so enjoyed getting wet.

Cooking With Michael
Your irregular guide to what not to do in the kitchen.

This morning I spent 15 minutes making a cup of hot cocoa. 15 minutes isn't bad you say. Good for you for not using the microwave you say. I used the microwave.

My mom suggested that a nice thing to have for breakfast or desert would be hot cocoa flavored with Splenda. Since I like sweet chocolate things and yet still want my love handles/gut to go away, the Splenda cocoa sounded like a good idea.

My first problem with the whole deal was paying $6 for what felt like a box of air. 2 lbs of sugar and 3.8 oz of Splenda come in the same sized box, and reading $1.58 per oz on the tag gave me pause.

After I had my box of Splenda, then I went looking for hot cocoa. It turns out that there's no drink cocoa, only baking cocoa. Ah, the magic of food.

When I embarked on my cocoa creation this morning I had a heck of a time getting into the Splenda box. My brown sugar box has nice flaps on top that re-close. Not Splenda. It has heavily glued flaps that rip when you yank on them. Only tonight did I discover that there's a handy retractable pouring spout on the side.

I also had a hard time getting into the cocoa. They put a foil freshness thing over the opening that I had to stab open with the back of my spoon. I guess I stabbed a little violently, because an overwhelming cloud of cocoa shot out of the hole and settled down over most of my counter. If I keep making this stuff I may need to get a swiffer for the express purpose of swiffing up cocoa dust.

With my Splenda box mutilated and my cocoa box open for business I spooned some cocoa into my mug of milk and stirred. And stirred. And stirred. Turns out that cocoa and cold milk go together like fast paced witty conversation with strangers and me. They just don't mix.

After sloughing a spoon and a half full of cocoa into the sink (and spending 5 minutes trying to de-clump it so it would wash down the drain) I microwaved my milk and tried again to apply cocoa and Splenda. It worked much better, but by that time I had so many cocoa goobers on the side of my mug that I kept getting big chunks of pure cocoa with every other sip.

The correct way to go about things is as follows:

Nuke milk.
Add equal parts Splenda and cocoa.
Stir.
Drink.

I once threw together a pair of wireless headphones out of the wreckage of an old portable phone, and yet the construction hot cocoa befuddles me. I am, apparently, my own special brand of retarded.

Chain Post

I'm getting all behind in my posting and read. It seems I've had a chain post foisted upon me:

3 Things I Want To Do Before I Die:
1. Cook something which somebody will taste and say mmmm and mean it.
2. Have a job where I have to think sometimes.
3. Own a house.

3 Things I Cannot Do:
1. Cook things which end up tasting good.
2. Spell.
3. Set the volume on my radio or tv to odd numbers.

3 Things That Attract Me to the Opposite Sex:
1. Dyed red hair
2. Musical ability
3. If they talk to me

3 Things I Say Most Often:
1. Fancy
2. Ow, Norbert!
3. I really don't need to eat this cookie.

3 Celebrity Crushes:
1. Laetitia Casta
2. Scarlet Johansson
3. Angelina Jolie, though I think I'd be scared of her in person.

News of the Norbie

Norbert likes pouncing on a freshly swept pile of kitty litter. Then she likes to run away thereby spreading it back across the livitchen.

Norbert likes to play high low. The point of high low is to choose things which are not yet on the floor, and push them onto the floor. These things include clocks, writing utensils, CDs, vitamin bottles, remotes - anything with a lower coefficient of friction than she has. High low is the reason my mouse pad is taped to my desk.

Norbert has trouble with transparent/translucent things. To reduce the meowing I've taken to putting a Tupperware bowl full of water in my bathroom sink and her water bottle has been relegated to the cupboard. With the bowl in the sink, when she splashes around in it all the water goes down the drain and not across the floor. But since it is in the sink she has to bend down quiet a bit to drink. So on Friday I was sitting on the toilet and I decided to hold the bowl up for her. She looked down at the bowl, and swiped a paw well underneath it. Then she lowered her face and took another swipe, still well above and below, respectively. 4 or 5 swipes later her paw was just as far away as it was from the beginning, but she'd gotten a snoot full of water. She snorted it out and started over. Swipe, lean, swipe, lean, swipe, lean, snort. After 3 more repeat performances I set the bowl back down for fear she might drown. I would hate to fill out her little headstone:

Norbert Kadel
2005 - Later in 2005
She was cute and soft, but not very bright. Also, she was sharp. Very sharp. Literally, not mentally.

Good Friday

But not in the religious sense.

I started off my day with the pick-up of an in-home bed frame. Retrieving a bed frame does not a good day make, but the context surrounding the pick-up made it worth while.

As I was taking apart the frame the little Filipina caregiver lady fired questions at me and her 20ish year old niece wandered around trying to look busy. Why does this other bed only have 2 wheel locks? Why is the mattress so heavy? Do I need help loading the van? Why is the foam mattress not a rental? Why doesn't the other company come get their wheelchair? Am I married?

Whoa there.

Me: No.
Caregiver: But you have a girlfriend?
Me: No, not at the moment.
CG: Well, if you are looking, Melina [her niece] is available.
Melina (looking joyfully embarrassed): Oh stop!
CG: I'm just saying to her, if you are looking for a boyfriend you just wait until Michael gets here. He is a fine looking boy.
Melina: Auntie!

Unsure of what to do I smiled and continued loading the bed frame into my van. When I was done both of them made a point of saying individual goodbyes.

It’s not that Melina was undatable or anything, but that’s not really how I work. Generally I work on the internet. Does anyone work like that? Here, date my daughter. Ok, thanks. Weird.

Then on my way home at the end of the day I stopped for gas and some cinnamon bears. I discovered upon my first bite that they were fresh off the bear vine. Or out of the bear extruder. Whatever. They had just recently come from wherever it is that cinnamon bears come from. Mmmm, fresh bears.

Let's Go Out To The Movies

Last night I went to see Shopgirl staring Clair Danes and Steve Martin. The movie was adapted from a novel by Steve Martin. The movie is narrated by Steve Martin.

Generally I like Steve Martin. I can't speak to his ability to write novels as I haven't read any of his work. But I am convinced about his ability to adapt his novels into movies. Shopgirl was terrible.

There were several notable problems with it. First and foremost being that it didn't make any sense. It was as if they started out with waaay too much movie and they had to sacrifice all the scenes which made the plot cohesive. It was just a series of vaguely connected vignettes.

Really great movies have good dialog. Or at least good chemistry between actors. This had terrible dialog and all of the on screen interactions made me feel uncomfortable. And I don't know if this counts as dialog, but I found the narration to be really disconcerting. Steve Martin plays Ray Porter. But Steve Martin also narrates from kind of an omniscient point of view. (Can you have a point of view if you are omniscient?) So he ends up referring to himself in the third person. "As Ray Porter watches her walk away..." Is he narrating as Ray Porter? Is he narrating as Steve Martin outside the context of the movie? Did the original narrator quit with no notice?

The other problems were just weird plot elements. What's Jeremy doing just off stage with an amp? Whose amp breaks in the middle of a set? I mean really. Who gave this band such a nice tour bus? They aren't a very good band. I realize none of this stuff makes sense without context, but rest assured that if you had context you would know what I was referring to, but it still wouldn't make any sense.

The single positive aspect of the movie is seeing a lot of Clair Danes. A LOT. She has a semi-nude scene, an actual nude scene, an obscured nude scene, and 3594 scenes of her shaving her legs in between. Unfortunately the movies timeline is a little hard to follow, so I'm not sure if those leg shaving scenes constitute really smooth legs or just regular smooth legs.

Either way I would wait until it comes out on DVD and then rent something else.